"The Wolverine" Gets Official Release Date

Hugh Jackman reprises his role as Logan in "The Wolverine" July 26, 2013.

Wolverine is back in July 2013 to continue being the best there is at what he does on the big screen. "The Wolverine" is now slated for a July 26, 2013 release date from Marvel and 20th Century Fox, despite production delays. Directed by James Mangold, the "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" sequel stars Hugh Jackman with original screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and rewrites by Mark Bomback. Production was initially delayed due to Jackman's involvement with the "Les Misérables" feature film. While the plot details are vague, the story -- based on the 1982 "Wolverine" miniseries by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller -- follows Wolverine to Japan in a forbidden romance with a Japanese woman, culminating in a battle with her father, brothers and the Silver Samurai.

"When a director takes over any script, they need to make it their movie," Jackman said in September 2011. "So Jim hired Mark to help him make the movie his own. Darren had worked on the script himself and taken it in a certain direction that was right for him. And that would have been a great version of the movie. I’ve seen Jim’s version now and, you know, Jim saw things that weren’t working for him that were working for Darren. And I’ve got to hand it to Fox and to Jim, it’s easy when you start with the best script we’ve had from Chris McQuarrie. Which is why Darren signed on. So once you have that, that’s 80, 85 percent of your movie. … It’s a little darker and, I think, a little more true to the character. If you read all of [the Japanese saga] there is a lot of it that is a little disparate and some of it’s got X-Men in it. There’s a wedding and all that. So we take license with that."